Nurses are pivotal to the delivery of care in aged care and the sector needs to better support them to use their full scope of practice, the head of the national professional organisation for nurses in health and aged care has said.
Australian College of Nursing CEO Kylie Ward said she was “extremely concerned at the diluting of the standards of care and the fact that registered nurses are not seen as pivotal to the delivery of exceptional care.”
Older people entered residential aged care facilities because they provided nursing-led care that addressed their needs from a holistic perspective, Professor Ward told Australian Ageing Agenda.
“With the acuity and complexity of residents it is really important that there is a registered nurse and enrolled nurse in governance in the delivery of care,” she said.
Professor Ward, who has a background in aged care nursing and management, said that aged care nursing offered dynamic, exciting and rewarding work with exceptional career opportunities.
But many challenges came with the role and aged care organisations needed to offer more career development pathways and to attract more nurses, she said.
“It is getting harder and harder on registered nurses as quite often they are the highest level and only professional on a shift. We don’t have the multi-disciplinary team that we do in other areas so the doctors and allied health professionals rely on us to govern and oversee a holistic approach to care,” she said.
“It can get very demanding and potentially a little lonely when you don’t have your colleagues to bounce ideas around, so aged care facilities need to do more and attract more.”
Aged care nurses have to be competent, capable and professional clinicians and use all of their clinical skills because of the diversity of residents and their care needs, Professor Ward told AAA ahead of her upcoming address at the The Future of Aged Care Summit.
Models of care and staffing needed to adapt to the increasing acuity of residents, while more work was required with nurse practitioners and the interface between hospitals and facilities, she said.
One strategy to address the predicted shortfall in nursing clinicians in coming years is to ensure that all nurses are working to their full scope of practice, she said.
A key issue around scope of practice was that even though there was national registration, nurses were quite often bound by policies, procedures and competencies at the local level.
“We should be able to work to our full capacity as a licensed professional. I know if I can put a catheter in or not. I know if I have those skills. I don’t need to be checked every time I go somewhere,” she said.
Source: http://www.australianageingagenda.com.au/
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